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There was the word “Henry” and Dorothy Gael’s face twisted up like a painting of the Devil, and her lips pulled back in concentrated hatred, and she slapped Emma across the face. The noise was so loud that Mr. Clark dropped his chalk. Emma wailed in shock.

“Dorothy Gael. Did you hit her?” Mr. Clark knew that this was his chance.

Dorothy said nothing. Her face was puffed out like an adder, arrested in an expression of utter rage and turmoil that unmanned Mr. Clark for a moment. He had never seen an expression like it on a child’s face.

“Did anyone see what happened?” Mr. Clark asked.

That’s when it broke. “No,” said Angela, the two-edged sword. Her arms were folded. She had decided. The time had come. “But Dorothy is always doing things like that.”

“She picks on people.”

“She makes Amy Hugson give her money, and if she doesn’t she hurts her real bad.”

“She put cowpat all over Tommy’s face.”

“She hits people all the time.”

In chorus, like a Greek tragedy.

“Dorothy Gael, is all of this true?”

The terrible head turned toward him. Not a Fury, he thought. A Gorgon. A glance turns to stone.

“Why are you asking me, Clark?” the child said. No “Mister,” just a hard, blunt last name like in a bar room.

The child was smiling at him. “Everything I say is a lie. I got to lie all the time.”

Mr. Clark was thinking he had never seen the like of it for pure evil.

Dorothy was thinking: My uncle does that to me every day in the dirt. Is that the truth you want to hear?

“Dorothy. You’re going to come with me to the Principal’s office.”

There was no gasp, just silence. The children were almost sorry then. Girls did not get the Strap. This was a real change. Girls keenly felt the distinction of Straplessness both as a privilege and a penance. In part, they wanted to be beaten because it was an approved achievement that was denied them. But now that it was happening, the change, the revolution, was shocking. They were too young to have seen many changes.

“Let’s go then,” said Dorothy Gael. She almost sounded bored. As she walked up the aisle, she bumped her hips from side to side to say, That’s what I think of you all.

The children had another shock. Mr. Clark boxed her ear. “You stop acting up,” he said. The child stared back at him stony-faced. What else you going to do? the expression seemed to ask, as if she were invulnerable.

Mr. Clark marched her to Professor Lantz’s office. There had to be a Principal and he had to be a man, so that there could be a Strap.

“I think the time has come to give Dorothy Gael what she’s been asking for,” said Mr. Clark.

The Principal was older, fatter, with ridiculous gray whiskers that went form one end of his face to another. He wore checked trousers. He leaned forward in his chair and adopted a smooth and soothing voice that was supposed to sound wise.

“Dorothy. I think you know why this is being done. You know the sorts of things you’ve been doing. This is happening because the other children have finally decided that they have to turn to us to discipline you. Are you sorry for what you have done?”

“No,” said Dorothy.

The Principal sighed and looked at Mr. Clark and his female assistant, Mrs. Warren.

“You’ve brought this on yourself, Dorothy.”

“Can we just get it over with?”

There had to be a woman present. The Principal had already taken legal advice. And he could not beat a little girl across her bottom. The proprieties had to be observed. It had to be across the hand—or the wrist if the child tried to pull away. The wrist was far more painful. All the children knew it was up to them not to pull their hands away.

“Hold out your hand.”

Dorothy presented it. Mrs. Warren grabbed the fingers and held them flat. The eyes behind Mrs. Warren’s spectacles were like tiny pebbles. The Principal struck, using a one-inch-wide leather Strap. It sounded worse than it was. He didn’t strike too hard at first. He looked into the child’s eyes for some sign of contrition. All he saw was rebellion. He struck again, looking this time for pain. The face went red, but there was no surrender. He hit her ten times. The hand was released.

Her eyes were full of heart-stilling hatred.

“One day,” the child whispered, “I’m going to be bigger than you are and I’m going to break your nose.”

“The other hand,” said the Principal. He got more satisfaction this time. The face went red on the first stroke, and involuntarily, Dorothy tried to pull away. She decided she could not absorb the pain after all. She began to struggle; her hand and wrist darted about. All right then, be it on you, thought the Principal. The Strap lashed her about the wrist. Welts and little purple dots showed on the skin. He had to stop after another ten. They had never given more than ten to any child.

Dorothy Gael’s face was puffed out like a serpent’s, but she held her tears. Her hands were claws. Professor Lantz looked at her, panting. They all looked at her. With immense effort, Dorothy Gael managed to smile.

“What do we do now?” asked Mr. Clark, who realized that the punishment had done no good.

The Principal shook his head. “Take her back.”

The child walked ahead of Mr. Clark down the hall. He could see her hunched and tense, determined not to cry. He had to hand it to her. She was tough. They made them tough in Kansas. She stopped just outside the classroom door.

“Open the door, Dorothy,” he said.

“I can’t,” she answered him with mere impatience. How stupid are you? she seemed to say. My hands have been beaten raw.

Mr. Clark understood then that they had made a terrible mistake, a tactical error. They had not punished Dorothy Gael. He saw her gather herself in. He opened the door and watched her enter in triumph.

She was smiling, beaming, and she held up both hands in triumph, both arms raised so that the class could see the welts and the blood.

“What are you going to do now?” she asked them all in a silky voice she had learned from the teachers. “There’s nothing they can do to me. There’s nothing any of you can do to me.”

The class and Mr. Clark understood then that they had created a monster. And monsters have to be appeased.

Little Emma, the ally, had been whipped into line. She had learned never to tease Dorothy again and she knew that she was nothing without Dorothy. The second Fury was more than content to be Dorothy’s lieutenant. And the teacher and the class let the Furies talk, and they let the Furies laugh. Angela began to lose power. Mr. Clark was helpless. Teaching became impossible. He dreaded going into the classroom. He knew he had failed the children, failed to protect them, and they saw no reason now to take him seriously. They all began to call him Clark, last name only. He became ill.

That’s how they got the Substitute Teacher. The children knew the Substitute was not a real teacher because he was so soft. He had a round and smiling, handsome face, and he was young, only about ten years older than them. He had a lovely voice, very warm and soft and beguiling, and his movements were small and neat and quick. He wore a straw boater. He was like nothing the children of Kansas had seen.

He was, it turned out, an actor from New York. He told them about a play he had written called
The Maid of Arran
and he was touring with it and playing the lead role.

“Of course,” he chuckled, “the handbills can’t say written and directed and starring all the same person, so the posters say that the actor is called George Brooks.”

What is your name? What is your name? all the children asked in chorus.

He chuckled, pleased. “Frank,” he said.

You couldn’t call a teacher by his first name!

“No! the class chorused, laughing. “What’s your last name?”

He told them, and Dorothy misheard. She thought his last name was Balm. Frank Balm. It was a meaning name.

“Honest Ointment!” shouted Larry Johnson, as if it were a quack medicine, and the actor bent forward with laughter.

“The original and genuine article. Every bottle is signed,” grinned the Substitute. He sounded just like a hawker.

He lit a cheroot. In class, he lit a cigar. He sat on the desk and crossed his legs at the ankles, and he leaned back to let a serpent of cigar smoke rise up from his lips. There was a frisson of real excitement from the class, and the children looked at each other, eyes goggling.

“My other occupation,” he continued, satisfied with the progress of the smoke, “was inventing chickens. I would breed new kinds of hen. My hens won awards. I even wrote about them. My new kind of Hamburg hen.” He made a certain motion that may have been like a hen, or like something else. The children weren’t sure what, except that it looked a little racy and made them laugh.

The Substitute had dash. He smelled of New York, he smelled of money, and he didn’t care that teachers weren’t supposed to smoke. He was small, what the children called a squirrel, but he was a nice squirrel. An unspoken agreement passed in silence around the class. As long as he doesn’t try to make us do anything stupid, we’ll be nice to this one.

Dorothy fell in love with him. My parents were actors, she wanted to tell him. They were like you.

She whispered the name to herself, all the way home. Frank, she thought, Frank, Frank, as her uncle put his hands on her and then moved them away again in fear. In summer evenings, there was too much light; they could be seen from too far away. Sometimes Uncle Henry didn’t do anything, except smile and pat her knee. Tonight was one of those nights. All the trees seemed to whisper in gratitude. Could she plant a tree and call it Frank?

Frank, she whispered as she fried sausages. She thought of him, and she thought of her own unworthiness, and tears stung the lower edge of her eyes. It was as if she were in a boat cast adrift, never to come ashore to some green and happy land, where people laughed and everything was beautiful. She herself had cast the boat adrift, and there was no going back. Now she would never get home. Now she would never be where Frank was. He was too good for her. She began to hate him just a little. And said his name again.

The next day, the Substitute brought in a thick red book.

“How many of you,” he asked them, “can speak Ottoman Turk?”

The class looked back at him in silence.

“Well, this is a book called the
Redhouse Osmanli-English Dictionary
, and it tells me what words are in Turkish. How many of you know anything about Turkey?”

Stupid question.

“Uh—you eat them at Thanksgiving,” said Larry Johnson. The class laughed, somewhat shyly, because they knew they were ignorant. The Substitute smiled, too, lightly, happily.

“Turkey is a wonderful country,” said the Substitute, his blue eyes going pale with wonder. “The Turks worship in huge domed buildings called
jamis
, bigger than any cathedral. Vast domes, with pigeons flying around inside and carpets on the floor and fountains where the faithful wash before worshiping. They have wonderful tiles on the walls, all blue and green. And the sultans have many wives and many concubines, so many that they all live together in beautiful prisons which no man may enter—or he’ll be killed. In the palaces there are special fountains where executioners wash their swords.”

This was very racy stuff indeed. The class was fascinated.

“Ask me a word in Osmanli,” he whispered.

There was a shuffling and a shrugging of shoulders and birdlike exchange of nervous giggles.

“What’s the word for sunflower?” asked Angela, who was brave.

“Moonflower,” said the Substitute promptly, smiling with anticipation. He didn’t have to look it up.

The class laughed, partly in relief that this was going to be fun, and partly from the pleasant strangeness of another language. It was like a mirror that reflected things backward.

“They pronounce it ‘aychijayee,’” he said and turned and wrote it on the blackboard:

“It’s the Arabic alphabet,” he explained.

They asked him the word for hen and the word for school. Dorothy Gael put up her hand.

“What’s the word,” she asked, shyly, “for home?”

The Substitute blinked and then his face went soft. Just answer the question, thought Dorothy.

“
Ev
,” said the Substitute. “
Ev
means ‘home.’”

“What’s your name in Turkish?” asked Larry Johnson, grinning.

The Substitute smiled, spun smartly on his heel and wrote, without hesitation:

Then he pronounced the word.

The class laughed in unison. “Ooze?” they asked.

He made a kind of embarrassed swallowing gesture. He pronounced it again. This time it sounded more like “Uz.” “It means ‘frank’ in Turkish. And Frank’s my name. It means a lot of other things as well. It means ‘real and genuine.’ It means ‘pure and unadulterated.’ It means ‘kernel and cream,’ and it means ‘self.’ It’s the root word for ‘yearning’ and for ‘homesickness’ and for all the things that people want. It also happens to be the original name of the Turks. They were a tribe called the Uz, or the Uzbecks. Or the Oz, and they came out of the wilderness.”